On an Aug. 8, 2019, presidential campaign stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden uttered a baffling sentence that has been much-quoted ever since. As can be heard just after the 14:20 mark of the video below, Biden said, "We choose truth over facts."
Rather than waste time trying to figure out what he may have meant by that, we'll simply stipulate that in another of his famous verbal gaffes, Biden flubbed the line he meant to say, "We choose truth over lies."
For context, here is the full run from Aug. 9, including gaffe: "We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts."
For comparison, here is that same run, from a speech Biden gave on March 16 of that year (before he had officially announced his candidacy for president): "We've got to understand that we Democrats, we choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division and we choose truth over lies."
Here it is again, in a speech he gave on April 30: "We choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division. We choose truth over lies and we choose science over fiction."
He was actually saying it as far back as October 2018: "We choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division. We choose allies over enemies. We choose truth over lies."
Did Biden once say, "We choose truth over facts"? Yes, the quote is correctly attributed to him. But the evidence shows that isn't what he meant to say.